Aftermath

A Reluctant Houseguest

The first exchange that was to occur between Harry Potter and Emmeline Granger would happen early the next morning after her arrival. It was to be expected, after all she was a guest in his house and they had not been formally introduced. However, as circumstances would have it, this exchange, would be far from pleasant.

Harry would not know how long he remained in that bedroom just watching Hermione lie there, bathed in light and unmoving. He could not tell when at last she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep or when he drew the covers over her supine form and turned off the light before climbing in beside her just to listen to her breathing. He would not know when finally he rose from the bed and returned to his own room for the rest of the night, resigned to question Hermione when he was sure that she was alright again.

If she would ever be, that is.

But he would know the first sound he heard just before sunrise the next morning. It was a small, terrified, shrill screaming, a panicked child calling, "Mister! Mister! My sister's not in her room! Mister, my sister's gone!"

He was awake in an instant and stumbling to the door and the shrieking child. A part of him was not entirely sure of what she was talking about, or who she was for that matter, but then another part felt the fear in her voice to his bones.

As he swung open the door before her, he had barely enough time to be startled at the fact that this was Emmeline before she screamed at him, "Mister! My sister! Hermione's not here, I woke up and she's not here! Where's my sister?"

Well, that answered that question.

"I... I don't know..." he said slowly, and then asked, "did you check the rest of the house?"

"Yes, and she's not here! She's not here! Where would she go? Where's my sister?" she shrieked again.

Her wide brown eyes were teary and slightly reddened and her hair was almost as wild as her sister's. Her nightgown, another of his shirts, was hanging slightly off of her shoulders and she was barefooted. He imagined that she had just woken up and ran through the house in panic when she did not see Hermione. He could not say that he blamed her, this was a reasonable reaction, one he himself had undergone, and after all, her parents had "disappeared" last night too...

"Calm down," he decided to stop her screaming first, no need to bring the neighbours about. "I'll help you find her, I know Hermione, she wouldn't go far, and she wouldn't leave you."

As he said this, he was reminded, ironically, of the fact that Hermione had sworn that she would not leave him and then did it too. With a sudden fury he could not help but think that she must have done it again. Gone and left him behind with her younger sister while she ran away to "find herself" without Ron. If she had done that, he didn't care what they did to him after, he would drag her back kicking and screaming and lock her in the house.

The child was speaking again, voice squeaking slightly, "The door was open, when I was looking for her, the door was open!"

He looked down at her, slightly confused before it finally cleared and he asked, "Which door?"

"The back door, I thought she went out there but it's empty, where did she go? Do you think she went back to Mum?" she asked.

She looked so earnest in this question that he feared that she didn't know that her parents were dead. It would be just like Mrs Weasley to try to cushion it for her and not answer that question. He didn't even want to think about it himself anyway, self say form the words.

"No, I don't think she's gone with them," he said, "but how about I help you find her, she probably went for a walk, let's see if she's really outside."

The child still had the terrified look in her eyes, he doubted she was reassured, but she allowed him to take her hand all the same and lead her out of the dim hallway, through to the kitchen and then out of the house into the cool morning.

The air was chilly and immediately nipped at the warmed skin of his arms and feet. He too was not wearing any shoes, and in her shirt he wondered if the cold was just as bad for her. But Emmeline did not complain nor show any acknowledgement of it. She was scanning the horizon and the length of street she could see from the front steps of the house and asked timidly, "Do you think she's gone far?"

But Harry was searching too and barely heard her.

In the clear, light blue-grey sky above them, the waning full moon shone a luminescent silver-white. The dark green deciduous trees and overgrown bushes of the village were still, barely disturbed by the gentle early morning winds. Around them he could hear the sounds of the first birds calling to the air and the nocturnal creatures taking in the last moments before turning in for the day. But nowhere around did he hear Hermione.

No movement, no breathing, no footsteps, no sound.

Emmeline asked again, "Mister, do you think she went far?"

Trying his best to reassure her while suppressing a mild, rising panic, he said, "First of all, Emmeline, I want you to call me Harry, not "mister", I'm eighteen. Secondly, no, she can't go far, I don't have a car and there aren't that many around here. Third, she doesn't have a broom..."

Emmeline cut him off, "Are you a wit-wizard too, like her... Harry?"

What exactly did Hermione tell the people around her?

First he didn't tell her or Ron for that matter, about Emmeline. Then she apparently didn't tell Emmeline about him, or seeing that her parents at least knew who he was, probably not much. (This, when he thought about it, wasn't too much of a bad thing, for he tended to have many pre-pubescent fan girls and really didn't need one living in his house.) Why was she so secretive, what did she have to hide? Who was this person he had called a friend for eight years now?

He turned his attention back to Emmeline, "Yeah, I'm a wizard, but we'll get to that later, let's find your sister."

She nodded and he led the way out of the front yard. He now had an idea of where she would be.

It had come to him as he stood there pondering the Mysterious Hermione Granger. It was the first and last place she would ever want to be once she realised, and no doubt to her horror, that Harry had taken a house in the same place she also didn't want to be.

The site of Ron's murder and his parents' graves- the graveyard of Godric's Hollow.

As they left the yard he headed right and up along the street that would head to the graveyard. There were no inhabitants about, there were very few in this stretch of street anyway. That was good; he did not want to see them.

Even though most of the inhabitants were Muggles, the fact that a strange, single, eighteen year old had moved into the lovely, single storey Queen Anne house with the vine covered wall and gate was enough to draw attention. The addition of a young unmarried woman and a small child, whose age he was yet to ascertain while he pondered Hermione's reasons temporarily the night before, would no doubt add to it tenfold. The sight of him and the aforementioned child, walking just before sunrise down the street to the graveyard, dressed only in pyjamas and barefooted would just be too much.

Emmeline said nothing at all along the way. She was too busy taking in her surroundings, looking frightened and nervous all the while, to speak.

A small child of probably seven or eight, with bushy, sandy blonde hair, wide brown eyes and slightly tanned skin from her stay in France, probably somewhere in the southern half, she slightly resembled her sister. But only just, and for someone who had just been through a traumatic event, like her sister, the one he remembered, she was calm. How long this would last though, he could not tell, but there was still plenty of time for that. Then he would see exactly how much alike they were.

At their arrival at the graveyard at last, Emmeline stopped glancing around long enough to look on among the grass-buried and rusting metal tombstones and exclaim, "There she is! Look, Hermione!"

Harry snapped his attention from her to look out at it and then stopped, releasing a shaky breath, when he finally saw her where he thought she would be.

She was at his parents' grave, just standing there looking down at them, a slight wind picking at her shirt hem (he was equally relieved to find that she did have something under there after all, his boxer shorts) and her hair, most likely thinking to herself.

She had just gone for a walk, she was alright... she had not gone too far... she was alright.

Turning to Emmeline he said, "Can you do something for me?"

She looked away from her sister to ask, "What?"

"I want you to go home, close the door and get yourself something to eat. Can you do that?" he asked, somewhat nervously.

It was strange to tell the child to do something when considering that was her parents or sister's domain, but he had to do it. It was equally strange to speak to her and refer to his house as "home" for her too. But he would have to get used to it, and besides he needed to talk to Hermione alone and Emmeline did not need to hear some of it.

"B-but what about my sister?" she asked, her attention returned to the figure in the graveyard.

She was scared, she had just met him, she barely knew him, and here she was supposed to leave him alone with the sole living close relative she had. Even if she didn't know it, or plainly didn't want to believe it, Hermione was all she had left. Harry tried to assuage her.

"I'll take care of her, we'll be back soon," he said with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

She was silent for a while, clearly warring with herself as to whether or not she should leave him to her, but then finally replied, "Okay."

She turned then without another word and he watched her go until she was out of sight. Hoping that she would get back on her own alright then, Harry turned back to Hermione.

She was still there, she had not moved. It was almost as if she were waiting for him, he thought with annoyance, he might as well not keep her any longer.

With a resigned sigh he pushed open the gate to the graveyard and headed in up the hill towards her.

*****

"She was two years old when I went off to Hogwarts and met you and Ron," said Hermione as he finally got to her on the hill.

He was right, she had been waiting, and her voice told that she had prepared this speech beforehand. For some reason though, Harry still felt the need to forestall her.

"How are you doing Hermione... last night... are you okay?" he asked, taking a tentative step to her but maintained the twenty pace distance between them.

She went on as if he had not spoken.

"I didn't have any friends at first, knew that I wasn't the only Muggle-born but then I knew no others too so I had no one to share much with. And I was an insufferable, bossy little swot who was too grown up for her own good so I was guaranteed not to have any friends in the first place."

"Hermione..." he feebly tried to cut her off.

The wind continued to play with her hair and the hem of the shirt. She remained where she stood though, allowed the chilly assault on her skin so that it blushed slightly. Her bare toes nervously dug into the earth and she tried her best not to wring her fingers. Despite his emotions being torn between enmity and empathy, he could not help but find her nervousness alluring.

"But then I met two little boys on the train," she continued as before, "a tall red-head with dirt on his nose and his new, scrawny best friend with green eyes and a famous head injury. For some reason known only to... well, I'm not too sure who or what knew... I decided to watch them, no matter that they didn't need or want me around. What was it going to hurt anyway? Swots needed something to do when they weren't engaged in a book and you two were prime targets. But when those same two boys begrudgingly saved me from a mountain troll at Halloween, I knew that I had also, accidentally, made the right choice and managed to finally have friends."

She did not look at him, he did not try to come closer, and she went on.

"We were good friends, best friends, and close friends... family even. The danger that being your friend meant paled in comparison to the safety I felt with you. But, as First Year always is, and new friends always are, I didn't tell you both everything and you two didn't tell me. That we would begin to do later on, when we had learned to trust each other, when we had spent more time together, and when I finally allowed myself to believe that you stood a chance."

"I know I should never have doubted you, but I'm a logical person, and it would take two years before I would actually accept that a small boy that was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed stood a chance against a lunatic who had years of experience on him. I'm sorry."

Her apology was unnecessary, for that at least anyway.

"Third Year, we were getting closer than ever, but then, how could we not be? We had been through two years of what hell must look like and came out okay, nothing was too wrong and my family was fine."

"Of course, you weren't, you would never be and when it was thought that Sirius Black was out and trying to get you, I put my family behind me to help you. Emmeline was forgotten, a step up from being carefully left out while I got to know you two to just plainly being shoved out of sight to focus on keeping you safe, I think. And since we were yet to even know what Death Eaters were and that they still existed and could hurt you, and she is Muggle and no threat to anyone, there was nothing wrong with this."

She stopped, sighed and sank to her knees before the graves, not once turning back to look at him.

"Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Years, and even during the war, my full focus was you, and Ron of course, but mainly just you. We had to protect you, keep you alive, keep you fighting; there was no need to talk about me. My parents, my sister, my family, they had no place in your world, not when they were just boring dentists no one cared about save to fix their teeth when they needed them to."

"When they protested my lack of time with them, and they did, especially since they had somehow managed to learn a bit about Third Year, I decided not to burden you with my problems. They were minor compared to yours, everything else is minor when it comes to you and for some reason a whole human being became part of that "everything else" too."

"And then it was over, but at a price, and grief superseded Emmeline. She was safe anyway, she was with my parents, and I was here with you. But I wanted to go home; I needed some time to think that was away from everything Ron. A bad idea I should know, I read about everything on the subject somewhere once, but I needed it. And now, I can't run away anymore. Emmeline, who wasn't really a secret, just a left out detail, is here and my parents aren't. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about her sooner, but then, I guess I never thought that she would become a part of this existence. I'm sorry, so very sorry."

She turned to look at him now with tear filled eyes that glistened as the white sunlight and the now hastily approaching sunrise touched them. Her eyes were red and puffy so that he was quite sure that she had been crying a while, it was a wonder that her voice had been so firm in her speech.

He made to go to her, to comfort her, but then paused and said, "Do you blame me? Am I some kind of excuse?"

He did not attempt to disguise the anger in his voice, and he was not sorry to see her flinch.

Her expression became one of surprise.

"What? No! Harry I don't blame you for this... I chose to keep Emmeline and my family in the background because you needed both Ron and I to help you. I didn't want you worrying about them or if I should be with them when I felt sometimes more comfortable with you and the Weasleys, people like me. I made a conscious decision to keep them out; I just wanted you to know why I never told you about Emmeline before. She just wasn't that... important... in light of what was going on."

She explained this as quickly as she could, in turn making no attempt to conceal her anxiety for him to understand. But he had to be stubborn.

"Knowing about my friends, that they had happy lives away from me sometimes, was important to me!" he said in a firm voice barely above a whisper, "You didn't have the right to decide for me what I did or did not need to know about you."

"They were my family!" she snapped.

"You were my family, you are my family!" he retorted heatedly, his voice rising with his anger.

She did not reply, she simply dropped her head and began to cry.

He didn't want to care that he had hurt her, he didn't want to care that she was crying, but it was tearing at him when he remembered what she had just lost. He closed the distance between them immediately and drew her into his arms, though a bit against her will, and allowed her to cry into his chest.

She was seated in his lap, her long, bare legs drawn up so that her knees pressed at his thighs and he secured her body in place with his arms around her waist and back. She felt so small, so weak, and so vulnerable that he was almost afraid that if he clutched at her too hard she would break. She was Hermione, his Hermione and she was in pain.

And then after a while he rose from the ground with her in his arms. She did not protest or even attempt to get away. She just let him carry her down out of the graveyard and back to the house.

*****

Hermione had only just stopped crying before they were back at the house, and simply remained in his arms watching cautiously round her. When Harry carried her in through the open front door, she stood shakily on her feet and allowed him to lead her to the kitchen. She did not even say a word when he sat her at the table and brought a bowl from the cupboard or dragged across the cereal and milk from her sister, who was quietly eating already. But when at last he sat down with them, she asked, "Are you angry with me?"

Without hesitation he replied, "Yes."

She fell into silence a moment, contemplating this before asking, "I would have come back you know?"

He looked up at her for just a second before turning to take the milk and poured it liberally into his bowl. He could feel her eyes on him as he rose from the table to get the sugar and then came back to sprinkle some over this. He drew the silence at the table out for as long as he could before replying, "No, I don't know that. Your mother wrote me, you barely left a note and even though..." he paused a moment to carefully choose his words, "you were... suffering... you stayed there. I don't think I should have allowed myself to believe that you would come back. Not even for Ginny."

Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears again, tears which ran smoothly down her cheeks before she said, "I would have... I promised you..."

"And you broke it."

He said this not daring to look up at her, if he saw her face he knew that his anger would not last. He so desperately wanted to rage at her, but the events of the day before were still raw in her. She was being remarkably strong so far, but he remembered that blank look of the night before. She would break eventually; this conversation with him was a distraction.

"Harry..."

"Don't Harry me, I don't want to hear it," his voice was harsh, cold, "I don't want an excuse, it's over and done with now anyway. Have some breakfast Hermione."

She looked as if she wanted to say something to this but didn't. Instead she addressed Emmeline, "Hurry up with your breakfast, when you're done we can go home..."

"What?" Harry asked sharply.

"We're going home... we need clothes and things... our grandparents will be expecting us..." she began to explain.

"I'll be damned if you think you're walking out of here as if nothing ever happened, you left me once and even if I have to lock you in that bedroom you're not doing it again!" he snapped.

"Harry!" she protested.

"I don't care, I'll go with you to get your things, or I'll buy you new things, but I'm not letting you off on your own," he said simply and still refused to look at her.

He could hear her breathing hitch as she struggled against the desire to cry. He looked to Emmeline who also had the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but she said nothing. She instead twirled the cereal in the bowl while propping up her head with her palm. She largely seemed to be trying to block them out.

Hermione was speaking again.

"Harry... Harry you know I can't stay here... I don't want to be here..."

He turned to Emmeline, "You can use the bathroom now if you like."

Emmeline was up and out of the kitchen at once. He hoped she wasn't afraid of him; he didn't want her to be afraid of him. As for her sister... if fear worked he would use it.

He turned on her at once. "Who's the red-haired man Hermione? Is that why you lost it in the forest? Why didn't you tell me you saw something that morning? Why did you keep it to yourself? Why do you always do that?"

Before he finished speaking he was sure that he was crying too. He could feel the foreign tears, slick and warm, running down his face. Yet, stubborn person as he was, he refused to stop, he had to release his anger.

"Harry..." she began, trying her best to get through to him, but he didn't want to hear it.

"You just left me and pretended that I would be alright when you did, but I'm not! You were wrong Hermione; for once in your life you were wrong! Yes, I have this house, and yes everything seems to be alright, but no, I'm not alright Hermione. I'm eighteen, I killed a bad wizard but I'm eighteen, what do I know about being an adult and responsible? What do I know about anything when it comes to how life works? All I had was you and your promise and then you broke it! You broke your promise! How could you do that to me!" he cried.

He could hear her sobbing where she sat and still would not look up.

"You called yourself logical. You were always considered the reasonable one. Everyone called you the smartest, brightest, cleverest witch of your generation. Where was your logic? Where was the reason? What happened to that brilliant person I thought I knew, that I could trust?!"

He spat each question with every bit of bitterness in him and not one trace of regret. But oh, he knew he had gone too far.

"Harry, please..." she protested when he finally sank into silence, "I was hurting too... I couldn't... I... I'm so sorry... please, Harry... I... I..."

And then she began to cry, really began to cry.

"Oh my... gods Harry... they're dead... my parents... Harry..."

Her voice broke as she spoke; when he finally looked to her he found her staring at the table as if in shock at the sight of it. Her tears ran rivulets down her cheeks before dripping onto her shirt and her fists were so tight her knuckles were white.

And from the doorway Emmeline suddenly screamed, "They're not dead! Stop saying that! Stop it! They just went away! We have to go home and they'll be there waiting for us! Stop saying that Hermione! THEY'RE NOT DEAD!"

She ran towards them but to Harry instead and began pounding her small fists unto his side.

"You made her cry! You're lying! They're not dead! They're not! STOP LYING! Stop making her lie! Stop it!" she shrieked.

Her voice was shrill and terrified, no doubt as terrified as it must have been that night as Death Eaters stormed her house and she and her sister locked themselves in the closet...

With no other options Harry opened his arms to envelope the still protesting Emmeline in his embrace whilst moving across the table to her sister to do the same. As he touched her, Hermione collapsed into his arms, her head falling to his chest as she swooned. He near fell over under the weight of the pair as they cried unto him on the kitchen floor, reality, as ever, finally sinking in.

Strangely, he wondered how they had not brought round the neighbours with their disturbance this morning. The front door was wide open and twice already had their peace been disturbing by loud voices. But there was still time for that later.

At last, after what felt like several agonising hours, Emmeline stopped struggling against him. She gently tugged herself free of his embrace and said, "She should go to bed, she's not okay yet."

He looked down in his arms to find, and much to his surprise at that, that Hermione had fallen asleep. Emmeline, even in her grief, had noticed and seemed to pull herself to all her nine years and taken charge.

It sounded so grown-up it scared him. What were the Grangers feeding their daughters?

"Okay," he told her, there was nothing else to say.

He slipped his hands beneath Hermione's legs once more, her skin now strangely clammy or maybe it were his sweaty palms, and lifted her off the floor to head to the bedrooms. Emmeline followed silently behind.

As he got to the door of the room Hermione had shared with her sister the night before though, he stopped. Vivid images of a scared, crying girl struggling against him in a darkened forest flooded his mind and he paused.

This room had a view of the thicket of that night. The forest that thrived round this area heavily was most prominent on the northern end of the house. He could not let her wake to that.

Not even thinking of the implications of such an action if Mrs Weasley ever came by for a visit, and no doubt would, later that day, Harry turned round and took Hermione in to his bedroom instead. Emmeline followed still, as he spread Hermione gently out onto the bed and drew the covers over her form much as he had done the night before. When he finished this task, he went to the windows and drew the blinds to shut out the daylight. She needed time to sleep, but this time, he thought rather guiltily, he was very sure that she would wake up still here.

Stepping away to the door, he found himself once more alone with Emmeline. She was not crying or afraid this time though, instead she looked at him and asked, "She's not the same anymore, did something bad happen to her?"

It was ironic, considering recent events, and yet so fitting a question. He told the truth, "Yes, something bad happened to all of us."

Emmeline considered this a moment and then walked over to him and said, "I'm Emmeline Alice Granger, my friends call me Emmy, it's nice to meet you."